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A group of New York legislators are hoping the political mood is right to pass a set of bills meant to increase police transparency and oversight. And they view a root cause of problems with police accountability, and therefore with public trust in law enforcement, as a section of New York Civil Rights Law called 50-a.
Reclamando una reforma completa del sistema de justicia criminal, y una mayor transparencia y responsabilidad de las fuerzas policiales, un grupo de activistas y funcionarios electos, entre los que se encontraba el defensor del pueblo Jumaane Willians, se unieron este jueves en las escalinatas de la Alcaldía para pedir a la Legislatura estatal y al gobernador Andrew Cuomo pasar la ‘Safer NY
A group of lawmakers and activists on Thursday called for the end of a law that blocks public scrutiny of NYPD misdeeds.
Democratic state legislators and city council members joined activists from Make the Road New York and Moms Rising at City Hall to rally for the repeal of the state’s 50-a law, which prevents the release of disciplinary records of uniformed officers throughout the state.
A coalition of 88 police reform groups are making a hard push to scrap a decades-old state law that keeps officer discipline records secret.
The groups — many of them working under the banner of Communities United for Police Reform — will send a letter Tuesday to the state legislature calling for a series of police reforms, including the repeal of 50-a — a 1976 statute that limits public access to police and firefighters' disciplinary records.
The Safer New York Act is a package of bills in the New York State Legislature that would help increase police transparency and help increase accountability to New Yorkers' most common encounters with police. The Safer New York Act includes the Police Statistics and Transparency (STAT) Act, codifying and strengthening the Special Prosecutor executive order, reducing Unnecessary Arrests for low-level, ticketable offenses, and repealing the NYS police secrecy law (CRL section 50-a).
In 2017, Constance Malcolm sat across from Kevin Richardson, the NYPD lawyer in charge of prosecuting police discipline cases. Richardson said he couldn't tell her the pending charges that were about to be presented in an open and public disciplinary trial against the police officer who killed her son.